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China and North Korea: The Odd Couple Lives on, Frenemies Forever?

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea never has been an easy
client state for China. The DPRK’s Kim Il-sung plunged the Korean
peninsula into war barely a year after the founding of the People’s
Republic of China. The PRC then spent more than two years battling
the U.S. and its allies to preserve a buffer state in the northern
half of the peninsula.

Beijing succeeded, but only after suffering hundreds of
thousands of casualties. Yet the North never fully recognized its
ally’s essential contribution. In the latter 1950s Kim
Il-sung purged cadres friendly to the PRC and ordered China’s
troops home. Bilateral relations plunged during the 1960s with the
Cultural Revolution and Mao’s criticism of Kim’s plans
for a familial succession. Pyongyang later objected to
Beijing’s opening to the U.S. and recognition of South
Korea.

North Korea probably is
the most badly governed and most irresponsible state on the
planet.

Perhaps most striking has been the DPRK’s refusal to take
advice from its only significant international friend. For years
China hosted Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, showcasing its dramatic
development and urging economic reform. Just as regularly, North
Korea’s leaders returned home and enforced their policy of
impoverished autarchy. Even mass starvation in the late 1990s
resulted in few changes. As the state weakened private markets
arose, but the authorities later restricted even this limited
private commerce. The DPRK also routinely ignored Beijing’s
pleas to reduce tensions on the peninsula. Instead, Pyongyang
initiated nuclear and missile tests, challenged South Korean
military forces, and spewed vitriolic threats far and wide.

Yet through it all the PRC has remained the North’s most
reliable ally. China provides the bulk of the DPRK’s food and
energy. Chinese companies are investing in North Korea and
especially the latter’s natural resources, providing
essential financial resources. Beijing routinely shields the North
from UN censure and sanctions, and only indifferently enforces
those restrictions, which it permits to take effect. Most recently
the PRC denounced the United Nations’ well-documented report
on North Korea’s grievous human rights violations.

Nevertheless, reports that China exported no oil to the North
during the first quarter of 2014 again have raised international
hopes for a breach in relations. Academic and popular attitudes
have turned sharply against Pyongyang. More important, the Xi
government appears to be taking a harder attitude.

A year ago top (though recently demoted) official Choe Ryong-hae
visited Beijing and is thought to have requested a summit
invitation for Kim. That evidently was refused. (In contrast, South
Korean President Park Geun-hye has enjoyed a state visit to
Beijing.) Last December’s execution of Jang Song-taek,
Kim’s uncle and supposed mentor—and the DPRK’s
most important interlocutor with the PRC—put the entire
bilateral relationship at risk.

Jang was thought to be an advocate of economic liberalization
and to have played an important role during the waning years of Kim
Jong-il’s rule in spurring Chinese investment and trade.
Jang’s 2012 trip to Beijing to promote investment zones with
the PRC received wide attention.

Although Jang’s ouster probably reflected internal power
politics, he also was criticized for his economic activities. The
bill of particulars included “making it impossible for the
economic guidance organs including the Cabinet to perform their
roles” and preventing the development of “Juche”
fertilizer, iron, and vinalon industries. One can only guess at the
specifics, but it sounds like Jang was pushing unwanted reforms at
home and openings abroad.

Worse, from China’s standpoint, Jang was charged with the
“selling of precious resources of the country at cheap
prices” and having “made no scruple of committing such act of
treachery in May last as selling off the land of the Rason economic
and trade zone to a foreign country for a period of five decades
under the pretext of paying those debts.” He also was cited for
corruption involving a 2011 project at Rason.

The charges seem too detailed to be boilerplate, and suggested
that Kim Jong-un, or powerful regime factions, decided that Jang
was too close to the PRC, the unnamed “foreign
country.” Even if Kim did not blame Beijing for Jang’s
behavior, his officials likely would be wary of expanding bilateral
economic relations, at least in the near term. And Kim may view any
advice or deal emanating from China with extra suspicion.

More recently there were reports, denied by Beijing, that the
PRC had created contingency plans for North Korea’s collapse.
In fact, it would be surprising if the Chinese government did not
consider what to do in a worst case in the North. But the leak,
assuming the claim to be genuine, itself is significant, suggesting
that some officials may be fed up with Pyongyang. Even before
Jang’s ouster former Assistant Secretary of State Kurt
Campbell cited “indications that China has grown steadily
more concerned by” events in North Korea.

However, so far increasing concern with the North has not
changed Beijing’s policies. China continues to fear the
impact of a North Korean collapse—chaos along the border,
mass refugee flows across the Yalu, armed conflict within the
North, loose nuclear materials, U.S. and South Korean troops
occupying a deflated DPRK, and a united Korea allied with America
while hosting U.S. troops. The latter concern likely will intensify
so long as Beijing perceives Washington engaged in a hostile policy
of containment, which would be advanced by reunification on the
West’s terms.

North Korea probably is the most badly governed and most
irresponsible state on the planet. Aiding such a country has an
obvious cost, which explains the downward trajectory of its
relations with China. However, from Beijing’s standpoint all
other options are worse.

Only if the U.S., backed by the ROK and Japan, offers a better
alternative—for instance, to share the burden of a North
Korean collapse and withdraw U.S. troops in the event of
reunification—is the PRC’s calculus likely to change.
That still might not be enough to move the residents of Zhongnanhai
to abandon their long-time frenemy. However, it offers the only
strategy likely to have any realistic chance of success.

Doug Bandow is
a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant
to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of Tripwire: Korea and
U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World (Cato) and co-author of The
Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South
Korea (Palgrave/Macmillan).